The Drug War Exacerbates Deadly Brazilian Mosquito Plague

If you don’t know that the drug war is to blame for all the world's problems, everything you do know will only confuse you. For example, the drug war is helping sustain a deadly mosquito plague in Brazil called the dengue fever:

It's true no vaccine exists for the fatal strain, hemorrhagic dengue, which causes internal and external bleeding. But there are preventative measures one can take to avoid being bitten by the Aedes aegypti black mosquito – keeping the body covered, using mosquito nets at night, and avoiding standing water where mosquitoes swarm.

The trouble is one in four people in Rio live in poverty in the favelas or shanty-towns where pools of water are common in the rainy season. Efforts to contain the spread of the disease are being hampered by the never-ending drug war which impedes access to the favelas. [thefirstpost]

This is probably not what most reformers have in mind when calling for an end to international drug prohibition. But anyone who takes a good hard look at the war no drugs will find a million problems they never imagined. Any cost benefit analysis of drug prohibition is incomplete unless it accounts for every last inconvenience and injustice that we've unleashed in the course of this great fiasco, including the fact that you can't conveniently disinfect puddles in the slums of Rio to prevent plagues.